Merry-lad

Merry-Lad is a character of French Cartoon created by Marcel Gotlib in 1964. At the beginning supporting character of a comic strip published in Valiant, he quickly becomes main character, although the first publications in album go back only to 1975.

The cartoon

Merry-lad appears in 1964 like supporting character in Nanar, Jujube and Piette , a childish cartoon published starting from 1962 in Vaillant, children's paper published by the house of the same name and which will become later Pif gadget the newspaper of Pif the dog.

The character principal of the series are Nanar , a young boy, Jujube , a tamed Renard and Piette, a little girl. Merry-lad appears there at the beginning like a supporting character sometimes disturbing the good progress of the history, a little according to a model already initiated in Gaston Lagaffe. As its name does not indicate it, Merry-Lad is a dog with the apathetic pace and the inexpressive face largely inspired of the Droopy of Tex Avery. A little absurd humor that it introduces into a differently wise series makes it possible Marcel Gotlib to take more freedom with the standards of the cartoon of the Sixties.

Quickly, the characters of Jujube and Merry-Lad anthropomorphisent: it are rectified and spoken, at least between them, and the action is centred on them, while the other characters become development and disappear completely in second half of 1965. The series Nanar, Jujube and Piette thus disappears in December 1965 to be famous in “ Jujube and Merry-Lad ” where only Jujube remains present vis-a-vis Merry-Lad. The renaming of the series occurs in two phases: last the double board of Nanar, Jujube and Piette Jujube watch and Merry-Lad which go to the drafting Vaillant where one announces to them the new name with Merry-Lad like comic and Jujube like comparse " sérieux". The first double board of Jujube and Merry-Lad watch, in the first box, Merry-Lad who goes down from the zone of title through a trap door open in the top of the box. It expresses its satisfaction about the new title, then it receives a letter of a reader who expresses his concern to see disappearing Nanar, Piette, the Laglume father and Mr Joachim. He answers this lette with Jujube, showing that the aforementioned characters are still there but, in fact, one does nothing but guess them with the background behind Jujube and Merry-Lad which are themselves approximately plane. Thus liquidated these supporting characters are , while Gotlib brings important innovations for the time: characters considered as employees of the editor, who break the limits of the drawn board and the boxes and which are addressed to the reader.

Consequently the stories of Merry-Lad will turn mainly around two topics: in some, Jujube wants to make do something or learn something with Merry-Lad, and ends invariably up being made ridiculous (always according to the model of Droopy ). Another type of history is that where Merry-Lad and Jujube are charged to answer the letters to the Editor. The history starts then with the opening of the mail, and it is then very probable that the only received letter comes from " Jean-Pierre Inhabitant of Li2ege, young reader of the VAr ". Jujube and Merry-Lad then hasten to answer in an eccentric way the put question, some of these bands resembling sometimes surprisingly, in their comic spring, so that Gotlib will make later in the Heading-with-brac. Miss Dolly , a charming English bitch, becomes the friend of heart of Merry-Lad to whom Jujube gives councils to conquer it (Miss Dolly will be replaced later by Beautiful-Lurette ). The series becomes Merry-Lad in 1967 then, at the time of the transformation of Vaillant into Pif gadget into 1969, Merry-Lad or the love of life .

Gotlib gives up Merry-Lad in 1975 temporarily, leaving the character to his assistant Henri Dufranne who animates it during one year, while Gotlib takes care of the first publications of collections of the gags of Merry-Lad.

Between 1981 and 1983, Merry-Lad makes some appearances in Pif gadget, and as from 1984, a new misadventure of Merry-Lad appears in Icy Fluide: Merry-Lad in slipway . To mark the twentieth birthday of Merry-Lad, Gotlib draws a page where the hero with the smile so soft reads again with nostalgia its clean first adventures, realizes suddenly that it is naked and decides to put a slipway. But since it puts the slipway, Merry-Lad is more the asexual character only he was: an enormous size is visible under the slipway, with the great confusion of Beautiful-Lurette. The new adventures of Merry-Lad and beautiful-Lurette will turn around the naval battle, play which they often played at the time of Conk, and of the light-hearted gallantry that this play allows them for finally appeasing their phantasms.

The series counts 10 albums published with the editions Fluide junior , but the album the naval battle or Merry-Lad in slipway (eleventh), him, was published at Icy Fluide.

Publications

With the editions Valiant

  • Merry-Lad , collection Kings of the laughter n°10 (1969)
  • Merry-lad Pocket : 35 numbers, of 1967 to 1975 (Gotlib, then very quickly Henri Dufranne - about this last, lira Hop! n°11 of 1977 (with cover), by Lewis)

With editions AUDIE

The original series was published of 1975 to 1982 then republished color of 1984 to 1988 in the collection Fluide Junior created on the occasion.
  • Volume 1: Merry-Lad or the love of life (1975)
  • Volume 2: Merry-Lad crushes maliciously of it (1975) (Prix of the best album to Angouleme in 1976)
  • Tome 3: Merry-Lad laughs to see beautiful in this mirror (1976)
  • Tome 4: Merry-Lad and Jean-Pierre Inhabitant of Li2ege (1976)
  • Volume 5: Merry-Lad only makes copy (1977)
  • Tome 6: Merry-Lad this hero with the smile so soft (1978)
  • Volume 7: Merry-Lad draws from it by a pirouette (1979)
  • Tome 8: Merry-Lad dredges like an animal (1980)
  • Tome 9: Merry-Lad does not generate the melancholy! (1981)
  • Volume 10: Merry-Lad draws a tronshe not possible (1982)
In 1986, Gotlib delivers an album of good-bye to the cartoon, by taking again the character who had launched it there.
  • the naval battle or Merry-Lad in slipway (1986)
  • Merry-Lad , ED. Shell/Bagheera/Audie (1994) (compilation of volumes 7 and 9)

Criticisms

  • the 9th Art , n° January 1st, th and th 1996, article Merry-Lad: Masks and Roleplays , by Peter Tischer

See too

External bonds

  • Official site of Gotlib
  • not-official Site of Merry-Lad

Images

  • Gay dog
  • Fund of screen

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